This was an excellent, if often bleak, collection. I appreciated that half of the stories (roughly every other one) were interconnected and focused primarily on a trio of characters. These stories were, for me, the main pull of the collection (but I think that says more about my preference for character development and novel-style plotting than anything else).

Very beautiful, accomplished and unbelievably sad while at the same time capturing the sadness, melancholy, competitiveness and hipsterism of grad school life for twenty something gay men.

I was so so excited when I was approved to read this ARC from NetGalley. I loved Taylor's debut novel Real Life that was published last year. Taylor has quickly become one of my favorite new LGBTQ+ authors.

Filthy Animals is a collection of interlinked short stories, with an independent non-interlinked short story in between each linked story. I was a really unique structure, which reminded me a lot of Bryan Washington's Lot.

I really enjoyed the interlinked nature of these stories. I generally do not enjoy short story collections as much as novels. However, interlinking these stories really made a difference for me. My only critique of this book is that is felt very similar to Taylor's first novel - Real Life. Many of the characters felt the same and I didn't feel a true variety in the type of characters portrayed.

I highly recommend this as Taylor is such a talented emerging LGBTQ+ author. Thank you to Riverhead and NetGalley for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Brandon Taylor is a force. I liked this story collection so much, however, the stories about Lionel, Sophie, and Charles could’ve been a novel themselves. I feel the would read more like a book of stories had so many of the characters not been mixed in. I would also love to see the story about Milton and Nolan expanded into a novel. Great writing and a quick read.

Life is Pain, Highness: Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor

All I can hear is The Dread Pirate Roberts in my head … “Anyone who says differently is selling something.”

And for Brandon Taylor, pain is high art.

Available in late June, “Filthy Animals” is Taylor’s followup to his Booker-nominated debut, “Real Life.” With this collection of short stories, he returns to Madison, or something like it, with several characters that are revisited throughout the book — Lionel, Charles and Sophie, and travels elsewhere to peek into the lives of others, including Hartjes, Alek, Nolan, Milton, Sigrid, Marta, Big Davis and Grace.

The thread that connects these stories is pain. And I think that is an important distinction. Because, should you choose to read this, you’ll also note a larger theme around sexuality. Taylor’s collection, like “Real Life,” feature characters coming to terms with their sexuality. Or someone else’s. But at its core, these stories are about the pain in humanity. Yes, pain in coming out. But also pain in the joy of discovering one’s true self. Or pain in the knowledge that life is fleeting. Pain in having to give up a dream. Pain internalized from abuse from long ago. Or even abuse in the moment.

It’s a lot of pain.

So why should you read this, you ask? Why read something that sounds like you are going to need a whole bunch of Vitamin D to get through? Because Brandon. Really, if you’ve read “Real Life” (and if you haven’t you should), then you’ll understand Taylor’s character development and his ability to write a sentence that pulls you into another’s world is bar none. I still miss Wallace and with this addition of Lionel, almost hope in some fictional coffee shop in this fictional Madison, these two men can connect and heal each other’s wounds. (Because, Lionel, Charles comes with baggage. Baggage!)

I want more to these stories. I want novels for almost all of them. I want to know Marta and Sigrid grow old together. I want Big Davis and his grandson to speak. I want to know if Alek is OK. And I want to know if Hartjes really XXXXXX Simon.

It’s funny, I am always hesitant to read a short story collection, as if I think I can’t get invested in the characters or that somehow I am being ripped off from a full-fledged novel. Filthy Animals is so much the opposite of that. Characters that wind their way into your psyche, packed with emotion, and just succinct enough that you can take a breath after some stories that are dark enough to have you questioning the human motive to connect with other humans.

Take note of this summer release and sink into a comfortable chair or porch swing and connect with Taylor’s people. Just fantastic writing. Don’t miss it.

This was not my cup of tea (a timing issue -- too much disorientation going on in my personal life for me to sink into these pages like they deserve), but Brandon Taylor can write a helluva story. I'm looking forward to rereading this one when I'm in the proper headspace for it. I 10/10 recommend this collection to anyone who loves short fiction.

I read Taylor’s short story Anne of Cleves ages ago (which appears in this collection), and I quickly fell in love. In some ways it’s a melancholic, heavy story, but there’s also a playfulness to it, and I found that tone so refreshing that I was sure that Filthy Animals was going to end up as one of my favorite books of the year.

Instead, this book is unendingly bleak. Anne of Cleves offers a brief respite from the misery, but it’s otherwise a weightier collection than I had expected. Every alternating story in this collection follows the same narrative: a depressed Black man named Lionel has just met a white couple at a party, Charles and Sophie, who are in an open relationship; he hooks up with Charles and then gets drawn into their lives. I loved the choice to anchor the collection to a single narrative, and without fail these stories were my favorites and the ones where Taylor most succeeded at accessing the characters’ complex emotional landscapes.

The other stories left less of an impression on me, and I think it’s because we just don’t spend enough time with the characters to fully earn the emotional impact that Taylor is aiming for, and that he nails so well with Wallace’s story in Real Life. I finished this a week ago and Lionel’s story is really the only one that has stuck in my mind since then.

I still really enjoyed reading this–a discussed, I love Taylor’s writing–and I would wholeheartedly recommend it. It’s a skillful exploration of the intersection of loneliness, trauma, and intimacy–it just wasn’t entirely what I needed it to be. But that is a-okay! Will still devour whatever Taylor publishes next.

Wow! Brandon Taylor has done it again! Through mostly-interconnected stories set in the South and MidWest, Taylor has again rendered moving accounts of people at varying states in life, but all with a deep sense of longing. Each story showcases Taylor's incredible ability in displaying his characters' emotional interiority, their vulnerabilities. The prose is crisp, but the emotions are what truly make these stories shine. I could have read more and more of these.

This book was incredible. The short stories are cohesive, beautifully ordered, and wonderfully written. Some of it calls you back to his work in Real Life, some of it shocks you with his talent: how can he possibly occupy all of these different stories and perspectives? The book is excellent. Highly recommend. Honestly, I recommend anything he writes.

Thank you to NetGalley and Riverhead Books for the eARC of this terrific book of short stories.

Filthy Animals, by Brandon Taylor, comes hot on the heels of Taylor’s debut novel, Real Life. Six of the eleven stories in Filthy Animals are linked by a triad consisting of Lionel, a black queer grad student who recently attempted suicide, Charles, a perhaps-pansexual dancer with a bad knee, and Sophie, also a dancer, and also Charles’s girlfriend.

Of these linked stories, Potluck and Apartment were the mostly emotionally satisfying, with Apartment acting in a similar way to a sort of breakaway chapter in Real Life, where we find out significantly more about Lionel’s (and Wallace’s in Real Life) background, and some of the echoes in his current character.

As Though That Were Love tells of the relationship between a farmer and his older, on-again, off-again lover. The failures to communicate between the two, as well as the exquisite details that Taylor brings into their life, make this a story that should live on for quite some time.

Filthy Animals is erotic without being sexy. It is troubling without being sad. It dares us to engage with uncouth realities.
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Filthy Animals is an episodic short story collection. I would best describe it as a novella braided with interludes from the lives of new characters grappling with similar questions of religiosity, corporealism, violence, and pleasure. It’s as if the main narrator, Lionel, sends out bat signals to the universe and in answer, God frowns down a torrent of contrarions. Lionel asks, “what is survival and what is brave?” Similar to what Carmen Maria Machado did with In the Dream House, Taylor lets his queer characters shimmer with humanity. They are breaking down, inconvenient, vague and violent.
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Just like with Real Life, I slipped into this one and didn’t dare let myself out. I slowed my breath in each story to keep the scene. The collection is surprising because the episodes don’t follow a traditional narrative structure - no rising action or climax. It is just tense as f*ck the whole time. Brandon Taylor’s strength is in building characters so complete that even after one page of knowing them, you can say “well of course Charles would do X and Sophie would like Y.”
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Most heralding was the exploration of relationship with our own bodies - in Filthy Animals, bodies are bending and snapping in an instant or deteriorating over time. Buzzing with pain years after self harm, or numb in the moment a skull shatters. Who causes all this? As we learn: “There was some other god...for whom the spilling of blood was a prayer, an act of devotion. And they’ve been praying to that god their whole lives.” In short, read this if you don’t mind dipping your feet into deep, murky waters.

*I was sent a free ARC of this book by Riverhead Books in exchange for an honest review*

“Filthy Animals” is a collection of intertwined short stories that center on a group of queer dancers in the midwest. At the core of these dark, gritty stories, is the exploration of the ways that the body informs our identities and the power - or lack thereof - to gain control of those narratives.

While certainly competent, I found this a bit disappointing. I had very high expectations given many of the accolades I’ve seen this collection receiving. I really enjoyed about half of the stories, but I found the other half repetitive and sometimes boring. The characters were the big hangup for me - many were sympathetic figures but not compelling figureheads for their stories. I actually found the stories featuring the more tertiary characters much more interested than the ones that followed the main cast. They often felt so emotionally distant on the page that I had a hard time rousing enough interest to stick around until the end to see if they would connect or not.

Overall, this was a passably enjoyable read, and I would be interested to see what else Taylor writes, but I’m not rushing to recommend this one.

The deal: A collection of interconnected short stories by Brandon Taylor, author of the widely acclaimed 2020 novel, Real Life. (Sidenote: I received an ARC from Netgalley.)

Is it worth it?: You already know. Taylor is exceptionally talented and if queer, quietly devastating stories are your vibe, this is 100 percent for you. My only qualm is that the narrative overlap leaves some stories feeling a bit too similar; they all sort of start to moosh together at a certain point. To me, this is not necessarily a bad thing, but it may be to you. In short, I’d say pre-order this shite post-haste, or at the least, get on your library’s hold list now.

Pairs well with: a lazy walk around Madison, Wisconsin

B+

I loved it. I was surprised when I read it. It wasn’t what I expected. It was so disarming too, and the vivid, almost grotesque descriptions of body were rendered with such gentle ferocity. Idk if that’s an oxymoron; that’s how I feel. 10/10 will be recommending it.

Readers of Taylor's "Real Life" will not be surprised to find that his short fiction is as insightful and incisive about human behavior as his longer form work.

"Filthy Animals" may have some points to make about how awkward and estranged people are. Nevertheless, as a who.e, it was a rather unsatisfactory, dull collection. Cannot recommend.

Pretty good overall. It's a but gutsy to write a set of linked stories, since it can be difficult to pull off effectively. This worked. He certainly has writing chops. Recommended for literary fiction fans.

I really appreciate the ARC for review!!

Brandon Taylor is an extraordinarily talented writer whose crisp, sharp prose demands re-reading. This is a more than worthy follow-up to Real Life, with the same melancholy tone throughout, and I'll be thinking about the characters introduced here for a long time.

Thanks to Netgalley and Riverhead for the ebook. Real Life was a great treat last year, so it’s wonderful to get a book of short stories as a follow up. Lionel has just come out of the hospital and is trying to survive this time when his college career is in a form of limbo when he goes to a potluck party and falls into an uneasy alliance with a couple who are studying dance. Charles, who Lionel quickly falls into bed with, and Sophie, the more talented dancer, but the one who seems more reckless off the stage. Every other story in this collection follows this very sexual and tense filled three some. The rest of the stories range all over, from a young woman going on her first date with another woman to group of young boys at a party in the woods who push their aggressions in every direction, including sexually and even to shocking violence. This is a smart collection that will keep you mesmerized until the next novel is published.

Brandon Taylor has been on everyone's radar since his Booker nominated Real Life--and for good reason. Taylor's prose translates perfectly to the short story form and you can tell he's experienced and confident in the form.

Taylor's collection explores detached, intimate, and complicated love against the backdrop of a campus story. This has the same observational and introspective that captured everyone in Real Life. Taylor's fans will love this and it hits all the right spots: academia, miscommunication, and slow burn stories. There is quiet tension, overpowering anxiety, and incredibly vulnerable moments. Taylor does veer into detailed descriptions of landscape which doesn't do much for the atmosphere and, instead, feels more like a flex of a writing exercise. However, I loved every second of it. His writing is so focused, sharp, and strong that I look forward to his indulgent writing spots.

I loved this and can't wait to get it in the hands of readers at my library!